The small boy loves puzzles. They play them a lot at nursery in school and he had a few favourites which we’ve bought him for home. He loves matching pairs and anything with letters, numbers or counting. We were sent the Chad Valley PlaySmart Alphabet and Numbers Learning Game to review, which I thought would be right up his street.

The Chad Valley PlaySmart Alphabet and Numbers Learning Games is suitable for ages 3-6 years. The small boy is four and this was perfectly pitched for him. He’s just getting into numbers and letters and really gets excited when he recognises them correctly, we do a lot of play around this at home at the moment since he likes it so much.

The Chad Valley PlaySmart Alphabet and Numbers Learning Game comes in two parts, there is an Alphabet Lotto Game which comprises bingo style boards with images and letters on (H for Hat for example) and a number dominoes game, which is like traditional dominoes but with colourful cards depicting frogs and horses etc. The game also comes with a set of reward stickers, something which sets every four year old child’s heart a flutter!

We began by playing the alphabet lotto game. You can play it two ways, the match the image to the board way, which we did, or the slightly harder match the letter to the corresponding letter on the board. I think this is something which we’ll be doing with confidence in a few months, but for now we embraced the simple joy of just matching the letters to the right image on the lotto board, we also talked about what letters and pictures there were. It’s all good learning.

Growing up, I’d play dominoes for hours with my Grandma and I still love a game. The Chad Valley PlaySmart Alphabet and Numbers Learning Game includes a lovely set of board dominoes, with each piece having animals instead of dots, for example, four dogs and five owls. The small boy really loved this and enjoyed counting the numbers of animals and finding a matching half to put his domino against.

It was a really fun game and we enjoyed playing together. I’m less fussy about sticking to the actual rules of the game and prefer to just try and guide him in the right direction if possible, but as long as he’s learning and most importantly having fun then it’s all good.

You can play with up to four players, so it’s a lovely game for our little family. It’s really versatile too, you can stick to the rules, or make up your own as we tend to do. I know it’s a game that he will enjoy playing when his Grandad comes round for the afternoon, they like to sit together and do puzzles, just like I did with my Grandma.

We like to have puzzles like this around because he does really enjoy playing them, he’s a really active boy so it’s nice to sit down and do a focussed activity with him, even just for a few minutes. The Chad Valley PlaySmart Alphabet and Numbers Learning Game is great for:

• Stimulating the brain
• Increasing vocabulary
• Encouraging creative story-making
• Having fun with words and rhymes
• Building confidence and concentration
• Improving numeracy skills

The Chad Valley PlaySmart Alphabet and Numbers Learning Game costs £9.99 from Argos and we think it’s a versatile game that will last many years, being played with differently as he grows and develops.

Note: We were sent the Chad Valley PlaySmart Alphabet and Numbers Learning Game for review purposes, all images and opinions are our own.